Assignments & Assessment
No longer the intimidating exams you may remember!
If you have been away from learning for a while, you may be pleasantly surprised to find that assessments have changed since you last studied.
Completion of the assessment(s) is a requirement for all credit-bearing courses. Our assessments are designed to help you learn effectively so you can make good progress with your studies. Tutors have developed a range of assessable tasks that are both rewarding and challenging. They are not trials or barriers, but important parts of the learning process that allow you to track your own development.
Some of the assignments do not count towards your final module grade but you do get tutor feedback on them. These are called formative assignments and give you a trial run at undertaking assessment. Other tasks will carry both tutor feedback and a mark. These are called summative assessments - they sum up your learning so far and will count towards your final module mark. It's good to do both as it allows you to know how you are progressing and whether you understand things correctly.
In other words, completing assignments and assessments helps you learn, helps you achieve, and gives you the satisfaction and knowledge that you are doing a good job. Assessments are also vital to the accreditation process, meaning that successful completion of them is necessary to receive the module credits for your work.
What type of assessments are you likely to come across? They will vary according to subject area and module, but three of the more common types include:
- essays
You will be asked to write about a specific topic in a reasoned manner, carefully using evidence to justify the views you express. - book reviews
You will have the opportunity to write more generally about a topic, say a book or a film, offering your views and opinions in a coherent but possibly more personal fashion. - portfolios
You will produce a variety of pieces of work that meet the requirements of a particular task.
If you are submitting work for modules you are currently taking information on how to do this has now been updated.